The present invention relates to a light source unit and a projector system including the light source unit, and more particularly to a light source unit which is made small in size without reducing the utilizing efficiency of light from a light source and a projector system including the light source unit.
A projector system is designed such that light emitted from a light source unit is passed through a color wheel and is then caused to enter a mirror tunnel to produce light of a uniform intensity distribution, and the light is projected while changing the quantity thereof for each pixel by a micromirror device or a liquid crystal display device, so as to display an image on a screen.
As a conventional light source unit, for example, there exists a light source unit 60 which includes, as shown in FIG. 13, a light source 61 which emits light, a convex lens 62 disposed on an optical axis K to collect the light emitted from the light source 61 and a mirror tunnel 63 which the light which has exited from the light source 61 is caused to enter (refer to Patent Document No. 1).
The light source 61 is made up of a reflector 64 and a lamp 65 which is inserted into the reflector 64. The lamp 65 is made up of a bulb 66 and electrode introducing portions 69, 69, and the bulb 66 is designed to be inserted into the reflector 64. Note that the color wheel is omitted from the illustration in FIG. 13.
Here, since part of light emitted from the bulb 66 and reflected by an inner wall of the reflector 64 resides within the electrode introducing portions 69, the quantity of effective light is dampened. In addition, the convex lens 62 cannot shine sufficiently the light reflected by the reflector 64 on to an entrance surface 63a of the mirror tunnel 63.
Due to this, the light source unit 61 needs to have a certain size or larger in order to secure a certain quantity of light, and a projector system which incorporates therein the light source unit tends to be made large in size, the carriage and setting of the projector system made so large is not necessarily easy.
In addition, although a small light source unit is preferable with a view to making small the whole projector system, a lamp in the light source unit is needs to have the certain size or larger with a view to securing the quantity of light.                Patent Document No. 1: Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 6-51401        